Greedy Goblin

Friday, September 7, 2012

The Apocalypses of hope

The HoneyBadger Coalition can't stop to amuse me. Not only because they managed to capture the most sov and by disconnecting from CFC, turning into an allied but individual coalition. I already praised their kitchen sink fleets, where members bring their own-funded ships to battle.

I already liked that they fielded Rokhs instead of the Drakes which have the badge of "New Eden welfare office against starvation". However now they managed to truly surprise me: they fielded Navy Apocalypse battleships. These things cost around 500M just for the hull. Now that's a huge jump from Drakes. And they work! I always told that ISK matter in fights and the "moar ppl" strategy only bring you to such point, but I did not expect it to be implemented so fast, and especially not by HBC, considering the stressed financial situation of TEST (PL probably fares better or at least has larger reserves).

Now I have a problem: where is the point when the best is good enough to take the good with the bad? I mean after long (and often hilarious) search I found how industrialists could be included into nullsec alliances: by getting their own donation board, a place for both personal pride and a tool to silence a "lol ima pvper ur a carebear" idiot by pointing out that his contribution, measured in ISK damage to the enemy is 5-10% of the contribution of a "carebear". The previous ideas (which were necessary steps to reach this conclusion), received extreme amount of laughter and mocking, but this one received only support and approval, so it has good chance to work.

However it won't be implemented now by any existing powerblock. Big things turn slow, especially if the changes affect the culture. They change only when forced. So I simply wanted to wait until they'll be in a dire financial situation enough to make changes. My plan was to amass enough money to single-handedly solve the bankruptcy of an alliance asking the implementation of the donation board in return. Two things are going bad for TEST, one is Tech nerf, the other is FW. FW offers much better ISK than highsec, offering even more moneymaking options to people than nullsec ratting that the alliance can tax. Also the FW LP print make faction items cheap, so more people can replace their T2 modules to faction, decreasing Tech prices even more.

But now I'm not so sure about this plan. HBC already did lot of good things and with the Navy Apocalypse fleet they clearly became much better for my taste than any other existing block. They shine out of the PvP herd mentality: "lol, we don't care about land, we had more kills." Instead they say "we don't give a damn on losses, we win land", just what I want to hear. There are three outcomes to consider:

I wait until they are financially bled out. When facing losing sov because they (or someone else) can't replace fleets, they accept that industry is a necessary and valuable thing and implement some form of industry-respecting system. Maybe my donation board, maybe something else, but the point is that they will welcome players who contribute via ISK and not PvP time and consider them equally valuable. Anyway, my long term ideas would be fulfilled and "I made history".

I wait and when they run out of cash, instead accepting industry, they return to cheap ships or lose some regions or simply failcascade and replaced by the PvP herd. Either way all the things I like about them (Slowcats, Navapocs, Supercap drops, kitchen sink, kicking the worst scammer of EVE) are lost. I can spend years in highsec, waiting for the next opportunity.

I suck it up, accept the good with the bad and start sending them donation, asking no changes in return. I have 70B unused cash now, so I can safely donate 20B/month to them. This allows the reimbursement of 40 Navapocs/month and above all, finally stabilize the terrible budget of TEST. No history is made, but I helped improving the overall quality of nullsec.

Please note that it wouldn't be "buying myself in", the donation would not demand any changes of recruitment policy, so I still wouldn't fit in. If I wanted to get in on their terms, I could for free, all I need is an anonymous alt. I want to join as an industrialist who sometimes fly (only when structures are involved) and not as a PvP pilot who carebears on some hidden highsec alt, so they wouldn't take me. The question is, shall I support an alliance where I don't fit in, one that consider the people like me "lol carebears", with 20B/month just because they are better than the rest?

I'll have to think a lot about that and would welcome ideas, especially from those who see a HBC entity from inside. Feel free to contact me about this topic in game convo or mail (Gevlon Goblin). Please don't use the goblinworks channel for that, it's offtopic for a trading channel.

I neither want to give up on the idea to get industry recognized in null, nor I want to see the only coalition that fields non-freak fleets to lose or simply stop doing the things I like. Going for both goals can end up achieving neither. Accepting either is giving up on (or at least postponing) the other. Now I feel that EVE is real.

Friday morning report: 159.9B, (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 2.6 received as gift)

24 comments:

The reason napocs work has very little to do with the fact that they are "expensive" ... or even battleships.. Again it comes down to numbers and a coordinated doctrine.

The napoc ('FoxCats') doctrine was spawned from a desire to find a long range damage dealer which could tank a tengu fleet ('ThunderCats') volley. It is an evolution of the 'HellCat' fleet doctrine.

The extreme cost of entry is just because it happens to be the tool for the job - Nulsec entities need to strike a balance between how effective a doctrine is, its survivability and weigh that against cost and how many pilots they can stuff into the fleet with the proper fits. This is why "drake armies" have been popular - they are insanely effective, cheap and cheerful and easy to train the masses into for a monster fleet of overwhelming damage.

The napoc's require no more training than the apoc doctrine - so many can fly them.

Make no mistake though, isk isn't winning here - doctrine and understanding of fleet mechanics is. If it wasn't for Pandemic Legion's legendary theorycrafting nobody would be undocking this expensive beast of a fleet doctrine. It requires a shit tonne of isk, well informed FCs and above all compliance from the fleet....a fleet of people... a fleet made up of the same "F1 monkeys flying rifters" that you so love to put down.

It is also worth pointing out that the much maligned financial situation of TEST should be taken with a grain of salt. TEST have been feeding false information to evenews24 for a while now and if you are going to make your finances public it is favourable to take some license. Unless you have firm evidence from an unrelated source as to the financial predicimate of TEST it is safe to assume that the spreadsheet you like to refer to is at least 50% bullshit. This is an alliance which can build and replace supers at a whim, and fund a massive ship replacement program. They are not...cannot..be even close to "poor" or in trouble.

Even if they were poor, them fielding a napoc fleet doesn't really have any baring on the situation - these are not covered by SRP, and as such have no impact on the alliance's bottom line. If anything it is evidence of the extreme wealth of individual pilots in nulsec, which is contrary to your opinion that people in nulsec must be poor.

The TEST finances are legitmate simply because they feed their own members with it too. If it would be fake, one of their members would find it out and accuse them stealing. It's impossible to prevent a 10K alliance being without spies so if there would be some "secret finance only for members", it would be out.

Gevlon: the key to good propaganda is feed your own members on the same bullshit you are feeding everyone else on. The members see this and go "oh noes we're in trouble". The only people who know are those with the wallet access and the budget.

Even if they *were* in trouble they have enough members with enough isk to draw on to get by without your promises of bailing them out.

"could tank" doesn't mean "battleship" automatically. There are plenty of ships which can tank. A proteus can be built with an enormous tank. Other ships can mitigate incoming damage by reduction of sig radius etc. In the past AHACs were used to great effect against battleship fleets, often flying at 3:1 or worse odds and destroying their much vaunted battleship opponents. Expensive doesn't equal more slots either.

The napoc was chosen because it could do what it needed to do. This had nothing to do with the price tag or slot layout or ship class. If it were much more expensive the cost benefit of running it would have ruled it out as a doctrine.

Isk doesn't win fights. Doctrine. Theorycrafting. Understanding of mechanics. and most importantly people - thats what wins fights. The napoc is just an "expensive tool" - your argument that it wins because its an expensive battleship is a strawman.

@ Anonymous 7:50:Isk doesn't win fight. But it allows you to get people into doctrine and allow more degree of freedom to theory crafting. To put it another way, if you can't afford anything better than a rifter fleet, then it really doesn't matter how good your theory crafter is, you're stuck with a rifter fleet. And obviously, the more isk you have, the more members your alliance can bring into a fight (not necessary a sufficient condition, but certainly a necessary condition). And that's the point Gevlon is trying to make.

You still don’t understand how doctrines or progression work. You are still obsessed about a false idea of progression and pimping. While there is a clear hierarchy of ships, there are pluses and minuses to every hull type, so that hard rock paper scissors exist between ships, due to mechanics such as speed, sig, tracking, EWAR. Every hull has natural prey types and hard counters. Battleships, while they have the tank and DPS, they are slow to move and enter warp, and large turrets have very poor tracking. This makes them vulnerable to small sig and fast ships, and makes them unsuited for a whole host of scenarios.In EVE it’s definitely not about progression for progressions sake, and pimping for pimping sake – that is the shortest way to a hilarious killmail in the most expensive killmails section – it’s about bringing the right tool for the job. "why do they fly my old ship? Are they roleplayers or something?" – exactly nobody thinks like that.Empire L4 bears fly expensive faction BS, marauders or pimp Tengus not because they have some need for progression, but because those are the best ships for ratting and missioning, They invest a ton of money in them because it gives ever increased performance in tank and dps which translates into more ISK/h which is all these people ever care, and without constant loss, you can afford to pile more and more money into a hull (until you get ganked). Interestingly, most of these ships like marauders make for crappy PvP ships, because they have serious flaws, or there is a ship that does 90% for 10% cost.Then there’s the Drake. The Drake is flown because it’s one of the best PVP machines BEFORE you take into account its low cost and SP requirements. It has perfect hull bonuses, the best tank of all BCs without sacrificing gank, generous fitting, a super versatile slot layout, and insane damage projection – that already is more than 90% of all ships (~ccp ship balance~). As a gang doctrine it scales very well, has awesome mobility, and if flown correctly is very hard to bomb (these are all areas where battleships suck). They are the main counter to AHACs, a hard counter to any close range doctrine, and ironically, they also scale well against fleet Tengus. Even hardcore PVP outfits like Hydra and Team Liquid (the guys that made 2 tril from the great contract scam) use various configurations of Drakes in small gang PvP to great effect. After the Dominion changes Drakes proliferated out of control to a point where they were making up over 90% of all subcap 0.0 fleets, and everyone was crying for Drake nerfs. After other doctrines evolved, such as Alphafleet and pulse Abaddons (the main hardcounter to Drakes btw), they still remained a prominent doctrine. The CFC reintroduced them after Branch partly because using exclusively alphafleet had serious issues and vulnerabilities, and they needed a simpler, more scalable and mobile doctrine to complement alphafleet, and also because they had seen Ev0ke use drakes against them to great effect – the perma MWD concept was stolen cleanly and proudly from Ev0ke. The drakefleet concept is constantly evolving, and the recent addition was an EWAR utility module, thanks to the Drake’s awesome slot layout and CPU, which has been proven very effective in large fleet engagements. Note how I’ve yet to mention anything about how is a super cheap insurable T1 hull that can be flown at 3 mil SP, those are a just icing on the cake at this point.

Doctrines are in constant flux, as alliances adapt and counters are developed (and CCP fucks with the game). The Maelstrom, which has been the dominant BS doctrine (and remained the main fleet doctrine of the CFC throughout the adoption of drakefleet) is currently being phased out for the Rokh because A) the normalization of lag via TiDi has lessened the value of high alpha, and B) the introduction of T3 sniping BCs makes Maelstroms with their shitty lock range vulnerable. The Rock has superior sensor and dps range and has better hull bonuses, so it can target tier 3s at 130kms while having a better tank than Maels.That’s why one chooses a particular doctrine, because it is a mechanical solution to other doctrines. It’s true that generally more expensive ships are “better” (there are a lot of exceptions) and one can put together a superior doctrine with them, but the mechanics and the basics need to work first. The Tengus flown by CFC and Navy Apocs were adopted because they are excellent hulls and very good counters to the doctrines of the opponents. It just happens that these hulls are also expensive, and also that the price/performance ratio and survivability is worth it. So it’s “that particular hull is has great advantages and owns our enemies’ XYZ , we need to train and fly it” not “that hull is so expensive and on a higher tier than lowly BCs, lets fly it because we are fucking rich”. And by the way, when you fly pimp doctrines, you are more restricted in your tactics and the way you fly – you need your best FCs, you need meatshield and support fleets, you need to be more careful with risks, and if things look like they may not go your way, you quickly need to disengage and look for the exit.

In this game, the main progression is horizontal. A more progressed player can fly (effectively) a wider variety of ships. This is super valuable at a metagame level, due to the fact that all doctrines have r-p-s counters, and also because doctrines are constantly changing. Being able to fly multiple hulls and instantly whip out the perfect counter to whatever your enemy just undocked in is a massive strategic asset, as is the ability to quickly adapt to changing philosophies and game mechanics. This is where the ~60 mil SP~ requirements come from – alliances that have such requirements greatly rely on doctrinal flexibility and they need their pilots to be able to fly a large variety of ships, just like that WoW guild needed 6000GS to beat the latest raid bos (whatev’).

Anyway, good luck on joining TEST, and may you have a shining career there (if they let you in). Now, I’ve been on TEST comms in coalition fleets… they were very taxing on my mental sanity. They made me look forward to DBRB fleets (sorry TEST bros). I have a feeling great hilarity is in the future…

Unfortunately you're wrong with regards to the Navy Apocs. The Navy Apoc doctrine has been created by PL not Test. And it can be deployed only when PL is guiding it and supplying the majority of pilots. It's a really nice counter to the -A- tengu fleet, but because of specific reasons. The reason being that it's tank is not strong because they've got more low slots, but because they tank via supercapitals. The natural counter to the Navy Apoc fleet is to either drop a close range BS fleet (like Hellcats) or tracking dreads. Both of these are quite good counters to the Navy Apoc fleet. However at the moment -A- cannot do that because of the supercap superiority that PL enjoys in Querious and Delve. If they dropped a Hellcat fleet on it, PL would instantly drop tracking dreads, and if -A- wanted to escalate further, supers would be inbound like a cop on doughnuts. If they tried to drop tracking dreads, again, supers in 1-2 min. That's why this fleet is effective, and PL being smart, would never deploy it unless they were certain they have all the bases covered and risks of loosing the fleet were minimal. Test itself cannot deploy the doctrine, there is a ban on it's use unless FCed and organized by PL.

I'm surprised you think HBC are "the best". It's filled with new players who rat and carebear all day long. PL provides good FCs, but many alliances have that. You focus on HBC because they fill the news media.

Have you considered looking at an alliance like Solar fleet? They are extremely secretive but very innovative and they fly expensive ships when they're the right tools. Or how about RnK, who rarely fly ships worth less than several billion, and have been seen flying battleships worth 18b+. They have a fantastic PVP record.

What are you looking for in an alliance? If you're looking for appreciation of industrial players, go donate your money to IRC, they appreciate industry 100x more than HBC ever will. If you want an alliance that uses large sums of ISK to stomp all over everybody else, contribute to PL or RnK. If you want an alliance that values sov holdings, contribute to Solar, HBC or Goons.

I'd honestly have thought this would have altered your opinion on current Nullsec finances, rather than reinforced it. You've been saying for a long time that nullsec alliance income is affecting their performance, and now you've got solid proof that this isn't the case; fleet battles between faction BSes and Tech 3 cruisers.

Granted, the NApocs are funded by personal wallets rather than reimbursement programs, but on a functional level as long as the alliance can expect a useful number of its members to make that personal expense on its behalf, this is no different from funding the fleet with the Alliance purse. Even if you do believe that the public spreadsheets for alliance income tell the whole story (and I've pointed out that they don't show saved amounts or any sort of investment programmes working with those savings plenty of times before even if they are accurate with all the alliance's regular income sources) the ability to fund fleets from member wallets still represents an asset you've not been accounting for with your "Null alliances are broke" claims.

The fact is that HBC didn't need to mortgage their systems, take on renters, drop sov or firesale assets in order to make this doctrine work; as far as I'm aware they didn't need to do anything special to shift to this doctrine. That means that all the time you were claiming that they were using Drakes solely because they were all they could afford, they had the potential to reship into faction BS or an equivalent cost fleet any time they had need of it. They were using Drakes because they were the most effective tool for the job at the time, which is what plenty of people have been telling you (and still are telling you) ever since you started equating Drakes with poverty.

Based on all of this I'm surprised that you haven't already spotted the 4th possible outcome; The numbers on the spreadsheets are either inaccurate or simply not covering all the sources the Alliance can call on and in fact they're well enough off via whatever sources that they can afford expensive doctrines when those doctrines are appropriate to use regardless of whether you decide to bankroll them or not.

As others have pointed out indirectly, saying "They shine out of the PvP herd mentality [...] they say "we don't give a damn on losses, we win land"" isn't entirely accurate in this case; they do care about not throwing away expensive doctrine fleets just for the sake of fielding an expensive fleet which is why they've not been flying fleets like this previously, despite evidently having the capability to do so. At this point between PL's theorycrafting and -A-'s current tactics a shiny NApoc fleet has become the most appropriate tool to use, thus the Drakes and Rokhs are put aside for now. If -A- move to other tactics that the FoxCat setup isn't appropriate against, I doubt HBC will continue to field their NApocs just to make a point or try and find a better fit for the NApocs just so they can stay in expensive hulls; they'll reship back to Rokhs or Drakes or whatever is the best counter to the new threat.

Indeed, I agree with Anonymous, you seem to be swayed quite a lot by the stories that PL Goons and Test keep putting in the EVE gaming media. Which kind of surprises me, since they're essentially propaganda but also meant to show off to their peers saying 'see what we have done, we're cool', a very 'social' thing to do. It surprises me that you as an asocial would like to join such a strongly social group as Test.

@Hivemind: the "sheets are inaccurate" can easily be countered. You can't really lie about moon income as counting the moons isn't hard. Also, they cannot lie to the public without lying to their members (it's impossible to keep a secret within 10K). If a lie is revealed by a spy, the leadership would have hard time convincing the members that they aren't RMT-ing away the money they taxed from their ratting.

The Navapoc fleet being member-supported both proves that alliances are poor and that they need industrious members (someone who just log in to "fly some shit hand have fun") won't fund a PLEX worth of ship in a fleet combat where it can die easily without his personal fault, even if they win the battle.

Also, the "tool for a job" is a non-argument. You can't use a tool if you can't afford it. Also, the reason why they need the tool was the also expensive T3 fleet of -A-.

"propaganda" is a good thing, it means that the entity has plans with the outside world. You can't do anything with closed groups.

“You can't really lie about moon income as counting the moons isn't hard.”I beg to disagree; TEST have sovereignty over 252 systems – that is literally thousands of moons that would need to be visited to check for mining POS and surveyed to see what they’re mining, and that assumes that TEST only mine moons in their own sov and don’t have any POS in NPC null or Lowsec as well.

“it's impossible to keep a secret within 10K”

How about keeping a secret within 9? That’s how many members are in the TEST executor corp. I’ve never run an alliance, but I believe it’s only executor corp members who can actually see the alliance wallet; they’re the ones disseminating budget information to everyone else. It’s entirely possible to compartmentalise the logistical teams that actually service the various towers (assuming that isn’t done entirely by the executors) enough that none of them have the whole picture.

“If a lie is revealed by a spy, the leadership would have hard time convincing the members that they aren't RMT-ing away the money”

Not if the leadership is popular and can point to their “open” books as proof that they’re being honest. They can call the spies claims propaganda to spread dissent, and laugh that they were stupid enough to try it on an alliance with public finances. There’s also the question of how a spy would make those claims; presumably they’d need to list off more Tech/R64 moons in TEST space than are counted on the sheet (which as I pointed out above is an impractical amount of work). In that case all TEST need to do is pull down enough mining towers to reach their claimed numbers and send an alliance wide mail thanking the spy for uncovering more income sources for them; claim they weren’t mining all the moons previously.

I’m not saying that TEST’s sheet is misinformation as I have no hard evidence to prove it. I suspect it isn’t 100% accurate because making an accurate public accounting of your finances seems more likely to benefit your enemies than help the alliance, but that’s purely circumstantial. I am saying that you do not have any hard evidence that it isn’t misinformation and your attempts to verify it via Occam’s razor are coming up short, which seems like a poor foundation to build as many conclusions as you have done.

“The Navapoc fleet being member-supported both proves that alliances are poor”

Only if you refuse to acknowledge “members who are willing to fund their own ships” as an ISK source. There’s no functional difference between an Alliance that has enough income to replace 100 NApocs per month and one that has 100 members each willing to replace 1 NApoc per month.

“someone who just log in to "fly some shit hand have fun" won't fund a PLEX worth of ship in a fleet combat”

Either that’s not the case or HBC already has enough members who are industrious without needing a donation board to field an expensive doctrine when relevant.

You’re still arguing based on your beliefs rather than taking the evidence into account; you’ve got solid proof that enough Null players to fill a fleet with faction BSes are rich enough to… fill a fleet with faction BSes and take it into battle, but because you’re so certain of your belief that nullsec players are dirt poor (despite no hard evidence to support this claim) you refuse to accept this.

“Also, the "tool for a job" is a non-argument. You can't use a tool if you can't afford it. Also, the reason why they need the tool was the also expensive T3 fleet of -A-.”

Yes, but it is quite clear that HBC can afford it, just as -A- can afford to field T3 ships in spite of them also being a Null alliance and without any tech at all. Claiming that alliances are too poor to field effective fleets in the face of alliances doing exactly that is also a non-argument.

The easiest way to catch them lying is counting the moons. Yes, it's huge work for a man. But -A- or any of the countless enemies of HBC has both the manpower and the good reason to send out a dozen covops ships to do it in a day. Then, maybe even with a totally detailed list they could prove TO TEST MEMBERS that their leaders are lying to them and probably stealing from them.

Also, the TEST leadership has absolutely no reason to make them look poorer than they are besides actually stealing. Politically it would be better to lie themselves stronger to scare off enemies and increase morale of troops.

My very point is that the greatest ISK source of an alliance are members giving support. The problem is that it's sporadic, random and unrewarded. The members who donate should be placed on a hall of fame for going above and beyond the call and bringing expensive ships of their own to an experimental fleet that could end in a hilarious killmail.

Just because some people do things without recognition and reward, it doesn't mean that much more wouldn't do it with reward. I'm more or less sure that the ratio of "TEST members donating silently" vs "TEST members donating if get their own hall of fame" is the same as "people who did FW when it had no real rewards" vs "people in FW since Incarna".

I never said that nullsec players are dirt poor. I said two things: nullsec alliances are dirt poor and nullsec PvP pilots are dirt poor. One can be "nullbear", although it's harder than doing highsec PvE and one can have highsec alts. They keep calling themselves nullsec players, even if they spend more time in highsec than null.

Some nullsec players have titans. That's 100B. That doesn't mean that their alliances have that or that they are ready to commit their titan (and reasonably can be expected to) into a battle where it might get lost.

Also, the TEST leadership has absolutely no reason to make them look poorer than they are besides actually stealing. Politically it would be better to lie themselves stronger to scare off enemies and increase morale of troops.

Well, that depends on how you look at it really. By spreading disinformation you can easily lull your enemies into a false sense of security ("Their budget is bad, they cannot keep up these kind of losses forever, more ships into the meat grinder and they'll eventually failcascade" - all the while having the opposite effect).

There is also a meta-war going on here between the CFC and HBC vs riverini's shit posting.

You are also neglecting to remember that TEST are not "eve born" - they come from somewhere else and have a sense of community outside of the game. They are more likely to be more accepting of being mislead as a result. If it is discovered that TEST are misleading people they are more inclined to roll on the floor crying "great troll" than get all annoyed and rage quit the alliance.

All that the spreadsheet shows (if it is accurate) is TEST alliance's moon income (which this month according to that sheet is well into positive territory) and 'available isk' (whatever that means). It doesn't disclose how many potentially trillions of isk senior members have squirreled away for a rainy day. Or the sheer amount of isk that they can call on by simply asking their out of game friends for - being born of an external community means that when the cry goes out for more money they are very likely to get it.

“The easiest way to catch them lying is counting the moons. […] -A- or any of the countless enemies of HBC has both the manpower and the good reason to send out a dozen covops ships to do it in a day.”

Using Dotlan, I calculated and TEST have 11,081 moons; that’s a bit more than a dozen covops can do in a day. That’s still assuming that they’re only mining in their own sovereignty, not in NPC null or lowsec and that any discrepancies in the spreadsheet come from moon income and not from any other income sources like corp tax (which could only be confirmed by checking wallets for every member corp).

But let’s say that the data is there to be found in the moons; you organise the effort to check all TEST moons for mining POS and survey those being mined and you locate another 20 Tech moons feeding the alliance. What do you do with that data? How can you get it to every TEST member in a format that cannot be faked, is easy to verify (expecting dubious TEST members to visit and survey every moon you list does NOT count) and cannot be shrugged off by the TEST leaders as a fake or simply with “Yeah, we’ve been lying to the pubbies and the idiots bought it”?

“I never said that nullsec players are dirt poor. I said two things: nullsec alliances are dirt poor and nullsec PvP pilots are dirt poor.”

Unless you’re aware of HBC asking members to donate so PvP pilots could get NApocs, which I’ve heard nothing about, nullsec PvP pilots are the ones who provided their own ships for the HBC fleet in question. How exactly do you reconcile that with “nullsec PvP pilots are dirt poor”?

“The members who donate should be placed on a hall of fame for going above and beyond the call”

Except nobody’s donating, at least as far as I know; PvP pilots are bringing their own expensive ships to the fights, but that’s already being acknowledged in the killmails and battle reports.

“Just because some people do things without recognition and reward, it doesn't mean that much more wouldn't do it with reward.”

I’m not disagreeing with you on this in principle; I suspect that if there was a more public recognition for and competition among non-PvP players to contribute economically to their alliances then more of them would do so. I do disagree with your claims that this is a necessary step for nullsec alliances to take and that doing so would revolutionise nullsec.

I also think that there will be significant social costs to taking the path you suggest which you’re ignoring; we can see from the functionality of the current system that a nullsec hierarchy with PvPers on top and nullbears, traders and industrialists viewed as second class citizens. A few months ago, Mabrick wrote a post (http://mabricksmumblings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/reward-for-my-hard-work-is-all-i-ever.html) that might shed some light on why this is the case. On the other hand, you’re talking about measuring contribution on a purely economic level, PvPers next to Carebears. While ostensibly putting them on an equal footing (still a social shakeup) this is going to be biased in favour of the ‘bears; they spend 100% of their time making ISK whereas a PvPer still has to split time between PvP and PvE to raise ISK for PLEX, skillbooks etc and the bears’ donations are purely positive to their board stats whereas a PvPers losses are factored in before contributing. The end result will be that visibly the alliance will value bears over PvPers, which is unlikely to sit well with the PvP core of the alliance; http://eveopportunist.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/carebear-disease.html might give some insight into the PvPer’s perspective on all of this.

I have absolutely no idea how noticeable an effect this would have on the alliance in question and whether the positive benefits of the ISK income would outweigh the negatives of the possible PvPer upheaval. I do know that it will definitely have a noticeable effect though, which is something that you’ve not examined in your own claims.

Most alliances don't publish budgets. TEST could do the same. Why do the leaders go trough all the paperwork? Just to fool me? No one else care/affected/believe them.

Bringing your ship in a non-reimbursed fleet is donating it. You pass control over it to the FC. It can be lost without your own fault.

Donation isn't necessary since you can always counter drakes with drakes. As long as your enemy is poor too, you don't NEED to be not poor. It would be revolutionary as the first alliance doing it could practically fly any doctrine they can sit into.

I do understand the social cost. That is one reason why I see TEST a perfect place to start. The fact they aren't paranoid about losses mean that they are less infected by the "ima pvp god lol" virus than probably anyone else in nullsec.

Gevlon, it is known for sure that TEST leaves certain items out of their public spreadsheet, e.g. any expenses related to supercapitals.

I don't think there are historic versions of their balance sheet available, so you will have to take my word for it - in spring when TEST paid for about half a titan for Sa Matra no equivalent expense ever materialzed on the balance sheet.

From what I've understood about TEST finances (as a dreddit grunt), the income on the spreadsheet is mostly accurate but the expenses are not.

Since it's supposed to be a budget, they use rather conservative numbers because it's better to think you're about to run out of money and correct that situation even if it's not the case rather than thinking everything's fine and ending up broke.

Also it's a tool for planning, so big one-time expenses (like deploying an outpost) aren't reflected on that sheet.

@Anonymous: Rooks and Kings alongside other alliances used NaPocs supported by Triage Archons.Last I hear, SRP for NaPocs is either 65 or 85% of the cost.

@Gelvon: You think most of the base-level members have such a detailed understanding of their Alliance's finances? It is likely that it is broken up to a point at which not a whole lot of people know the whole story. And if there was a spy at that point, they would either be revealing themselves or would actually help things by showing that Test is more stable than they say the are.

Additionally, Skill, not ISK trumps Numbers. PL put in AT Frigs against Rote and lost that match. Poetic actually wrote a good article about it.

Just because fits are possible to make or fly does not make them viable.Drakes have average or good: Speed, Tank, and damage. Missiles don't have an optimal range or fallout.

Auto-cannons lack range.Pulse works with Scorch and Multi.Blasters don't have the range.Artillery is used, Alpha and range.Beams work because of range, lots of grid use though.Railguns work, long range, some tracking problems.

Missiles work.

-I will never understand, why against the advice of many, that you continue to try and push your ideas of nullsec out. It appears as though you really want to be a part of it, you just don't want to do the work. You could have given Red Alliance, while they were in Querious, unlimited funds. It would not have changed much. Moral and Numbers mean more than isk.

Also, to all of you who only read the first paragraph of articles... The Navy Apocalypse fleet was first used by groups like Rooks and Kinds and Lost Obsession (I think that is the other group.)

These groups used NaPocs supported by Triage Carriers to maximize the strength so that they could take on much larger groups. You remember when FA lost all of those Caps in Syndicate?

You praise the kitchen sink fleet, yet have no idea what they're about. TEST kitchen sink fleets crash themselves at -a- tengu fleets. Players in the kitchen sink fleet know that they probably aren't going to achieve a strategic objective (there isn't one most of the time). They undock in whatever they can afford to lose without reimbursement "for fun".